This invention relates to a drug inspection device through which pharmacists can inspect packaged medications as prescribed, and a drug packaging device.
Medications prescribed by doctors are packaged by a drug packaging machine and, for the sake of patients' safety, visually checked by pharmacists to determine whether the medications packaged are exactly as prescribed.
Devices are often used which assist pharmacists in inspecting packaged prescriptions, as disclosed in e.g. unexamined Japanese patent publication 7-282219. The device disclosed in this publication has a camera for photographing medications in each bag. A computer processes the picture taken, counts the number of drugs in each bag and determines if the number counted coincides with the prescribed number.
But this device cannot determine the kinds of drugs in each bag. It can only count their number. Thus, pharmacists still have to check if the kinds of drugs are correct by directly looking into each bag. If there are a large quantity of drugs to check, pharmacists may sometimes fail to check all the drugs completely.
For speedy and efficient visual checking of drugs, it is essential for pharmacists to memorize the shapes of all the available drugs and their identification codes impressed on individual pieces of drugs. This adds to the burden on pharmacists.
This invention also relates to a drug packaging device including a winder for winding a web of serially connected drug bags around reels for post-treatment.
In hospitals and pharmacies, when drugs prepared according to prescriptions issued by doctors and packaged in bags are handed to patients, pharmacists visually inspect the drugs to check if they are prepared per prescriptions for patients' safety. For such inspection, a drug inspection device such as disclosed in unexamined Japanese patent publication 7-282219 is used as a drug inspection assisting device.
The drug inspection device disclosed in this publication is used exclusively for a specific drug packaging device. Drug bags in which are packaged drugs by a packaging device are automatically and continuously fed through a feed path into the drug inspection device attached to the drug packaging machine, and the drugs are inspected in the drug inspection device by an optical means.
There are a huge variety of drugs. In large hospitals, enormous amounts of drugs are inspected. Pharmacists have to inspect drugs delivered from not one but a plurality of drug packaging devices of different kinds.
Thus, it is an ordinary practice to use a plurality of drug inspection devices each for one of the plurality of drug packaging devices. A web of drug bags in which are packaged drugs by a drug packaging device is cut to strips of suitable lengths each for one patient for several days, and the thus cut strips are hand-carried to a drug inspection device for inspection.
Even if strips are hand-carried, when a pharmacist tries to inspect the kind and shape of drugs in the bags with an optical means, it is troublesome to set the bags in the inspection device every time. It is difficult to continuously and efficiently inspect drugs with this method.
An object of this invention is to provide a drug inspection device that takes away most of the burden on pharmacists when they visually check drugs.
Another object of this invention is to provide a drug packaging device having means for winding a web of drug bags by a predetermined length for the convenience of post-processing after packaging such as drug inspection.